Always Moving On
by Min Daae
Summary: He never stays for long. Five times the Doctor left Jack and one time he didn't. One kiss, many spoilers.


The first breath hurt.

So did the second, and the third, but by then he had other things on his mind. Namely, the fact that he was alive, and Jack was reasonably certain that he had, very recently, been quite dead.

There were no Daleks, either, just small piles of dust. Like they had all suddenly disintegrated, and his brain didn't seem to want to be working, his thoughts slow and stumbling and confused. Maybe he was dead, Jack thought, and just hadn't worked it out yet. Though it did feel a lot like being alive, right down to the aches and pains.

Then he remembered the Doctor, and Rose.

"Doctor?" He yelled, and then felt like an idiot. He scrambled to his feet and ran for the elevator, then took the stairs instead. "Doctor? Rose!" If he was alive, they had to be. There could be no other reason for the Daleks to be gone, and the Station was still intact so there hadn't been any detonation.

Jack still didn't believe it fully until he rounded the last corner, bounded up the final stairs, and watched the last wisps of blond hair vanish through the blue wooden door as it closed.

Later, he wondered. If he could have moved a little faster, if he hadn't been so out of breath, could he have called out and stopped them?

"Wait!" he yelled, but a moment or two too late; the TARDIS was leaving, Rose and the Doctor were gone.

Jack had been left behind before. He had been stranded before as well. But never, he was sure, had he felt quite so bitterly betrayed.

They hadn't even, he thought, come to find his body.

~.~

He had meant to be on time.

That was the pointless thought that burst into his head when he landed. He knew he couldn't change what would happen here, but perhaps it would matter that he was here at all. Martha had been the one to call, but it wasn't her he went looking for.

He saw the crater where Torchwood had been and ached a little more.

The Doctor knew what they were, could have driven them away. But he knew what that would do as well, and this course of events was the lesser of two evils.

He saw the lines of dead bodies, a lesson for one man that couldn't die. From a distance, he could see the new lines on Jack's face, the haggard expression of grief.

Who knew more than he did of grief and loss? He could help. He could be there, as no one had been there for him, and try to help Jack understand, even though there was no understanding to be had. No absolution.

If he moved, just a little, Jack would see him. And Jack would come and Jack would…insist that he do something. When he could not. When it was already too late, had always been too late since 1963.

The Doctor hesitated.

He watched Jack reach out and embrace Gwen Cooper, though the motion seemed half-hearted at best. He watched him turn away and lift a shaking hand to his face and could imagine the pain the immortal would be feeling as though it were his own.

If he moved one step to the left, if Jack turned just two degrees west…

Jack started to turn.

The Doctor fled, his own impotence too painful to face.

~.~

Jack had been alone in the Hub when he'd noticed the Rift activity spike. It hadn't seemed to connect to anything, though, so he went up into the plaza to look with his own two eyes. He stood on the square with the perception shield for a moment, trying to see if there was anything out of the ordinary, but he couldn't find anything that hadn't been there the moment before.

He stepped off the curb and started walking, turning his head back and forth on the highest alert. A spike could mean anything. Someone vanishing, someone coming back, some_thing _coming through. He couldn't make any assumptions about how dangerous the event was or was not. Maybe it was just one of the normal fluctuations, but Jack's instincts told him it was something else, and his instincts were usually fairly good.

The wind shifted, and he heard it: the familiar grinding, swooshing noise that he had been awaiting for years, centuries. The TARDIS was somewhere nearby.

He whirled around, trying to figure out where the sound had come from. Had it been only his imagination? Wishful thinking making him hope against hope that coincidence had finally brought the Doctor here?

_Please, _he thought, in no direction in particular, and ran toward one corner of the square, a pure guess. Paused, turned again.

"…you know, Cardiff is built on the site of an active rift in space-time – ooh, look, pretzels," Jack heard, and whirled at once, but he saw no sign of any familiar leather jacket, and the voice was wrong, too, more cheerful, glib, rapid.

Jack knew it was only desperation. But he raised his voice and called, "Doctor!"

Someone turned to look at him, a tall, rake-thin man in a pinstripe suit, brown hair charmingly mussed, a young, dark-skinned woman on his arm. For just a moment, Jack felt his eyes meet the stranger's, and a jolt went through him head to toe like some kind of circuit had just been completed.

Jack stilled, feeling a sense of – recognition? Familiarity?

But then the stranger turned away and was walking swiftly in the other direction, his long brown coat billowing behind him, nearly dragging his young lady companion with him, and the moment was gone.

Jack sighed, and rubbed a hand through his hair. Every minute, his chances dwindled, and he doubted, suddenly, that he had really heard anything at all.

~.~

He went back to Earth, without any real sense of destination, though he'd tried to flee at first. As always, it pulled him back, as he knew that it would.

The TARDIS, in the way she had, brought him to where she thought he needed to be, and that was how he found himself in Cardiff on New Year's Eve, while it was snowing. "No," he said firmly to the ship when he realized where she had taken him. "_No. _I know perfectly well what you're doing and you're wrong about what I need."

Nonetheless, pulling his coat around him, the Doctor stepped out into the open plaza and waited, knowing one of the monitors would find him sooner or later.

It didn't take Jack ten minutes to come stepping off the curb, deliberately casual in gait, but the Doctor could see the way his face was alight. So resilient, humans. And Jack in particular. He found his own smile, though it was rather weaker than his friend's.

"Hullo, Jack," he said, and was rather surprised when Jack enveloped him in an embrace.

"New Year's, eh?" Jack said, cheerfully. "I thought you only showed up for Christmas."

The Doctor laughed, a little bit anemically. "Yes," he said, "Yes, it does turn out that way, doesn't it?"

Jack asked him if he wanted coffee. The Doctor requested tea, and Jack turned back toward where the Doctor knew the entrance to Torchwood waited. He balked. "Isn't anywhere open?" He asked, nearly wheedled.

His immortal friend blinked at him, but shrugged, and said, "How about my apartment instead?"

The Doctor hadn't known there was an apartment, but he accepted it in stride and followed Jack there. He had tea, Jack had coffee with a splash of brandy, and they sat across the table from each other in awkward silence as midnight ticked slowly nearer.

"How's Ianto?" the Doctor asked, finally, and Jack seemed to startle at the question.

"Ianto? Oh, yes – he's fine. How about you?"

Jack didn't ask about Donna or Rose, so the Doctor didn't say anything about them. Just smiled and said, "You know me. I'm all right. Always am."

At 10:30 Jack offered him a drink. At 10:45, the Doctor accepted. Jack turned on the television and they watched the countdown for a while.

At 11:30, feeling flushed and warm but tired and lonely, the Doctor kissed Jack. Or perhaps Jack kissed him. Either way, it was awkward and sweet and uncertain, and he pulled away very quickly. Jack looked confused, and slightly tipsy; the Doctor imagined he looked the same.

"Happy New Year's, Jack," he said, and left, pretending not to hear Jack calling him to wait, pretending not to feel his hearts thudding in his ears.

On the long list of things he hadn't meant, he wondered if this would come first.

~.~

Jack wasn't certain what to think of what the Doctor had said about him. It was obvious that his very presence made the Doctor uncomfortable. "Unnatural," he had said. "A fixed point. It's not right."

They were almost done with the work. Soon all these poor people would be able to escape to their fabled Utopia. Soon they would return to Earth and the Doctor would leave him again, as he had left before, with no second thoughts.

_Rose did this to me, _he thought. _Does that change anything? _

It did, a little, much as it shouldn't have.

He watched the Doctor sideways. This new face was – different from the one that Jack had known before. Younger, lighter, but more dangerous for all that. Harder to read, too. And yet – and yet. As always, he found himself caught up again, by the man's very presence. His team thought of him as a leader, but with the Doctor, he always found himself in the position of lackey.

That rankled, just a little. Perhaps as much as the Doctor's remarks on his very existence.

He realized that he was being watched and paused, glanced over. "What?"

The Doctor was no longer smiling, his face serious, almost melancholy. "You've changed," he said, but sounding more thoughtful this time than annoyed or disappointed.

"Of course," Jack said, somewhat dryly. "A couple centuries will do that to anyone."

"No," the Doctor said, his frown deepening, "It's more than that. You're a different person than you were."

"Yes," Jack agreed. "Immortal."

The Doctor shook his head slowly, and paused, taking a long breath through his nose. "Jack," he said, and stopped. And then said, "You're a good man, you know."

And vanished out the door before Jack could even register what had been said.

~.~

He was well acquainted with the feeling of dying.

There was blood, as usual. There was pain, as usual. But it seemed to be taking a good deal longer than it had any right to.

Jack choked and spat, more wet red spattering on the ground below his face. He tried to clench his hand into a fist and panicked when it wouldn't close, even if the pain would make even brief release a relief.

The Master knew what he was doing, you could say that for the damned Time Lord.

A hand closed on his, old and wrinkled, and Jack managed, gasping, to shift his head to the side. The large brown eyes were just the same as always, even in that aged face, full of limitless sorrow and equally limitless compassion.

Jack gasped, gurgled, spat.

"Shh," said the Doctor, less than a whisper. "I'm sorry, Jack. I'm so…sorry."

"Don't…have to be," Jack forced out, every word deliberate and difficuilt. "Not your fault." Even if it was, a little, but Jack didn't have the heart to blame an old man.

"Don't lose hope," the Doctor rasped. "There's a still a way…always a way." Jack wanted to laugh. Hope had been the first thing to go.

"Wishful…thinking," Jack gasped, and the Doctor's face seemed to crumple.

"No," he said, voice too quavery to be defiant, and Jack laughed a laugh that tasted like blood in the back of his throat.

"Just," he said, "Just promise me. One thing. Just one thing."

The Doctor's slightly trembling hand squeezed his. "What," he said, "What is it?"

"Don't leave me," Jack said, and heard the pleading note in his own voice – but felt no shame. He was dying; again, yes, and who knew how many times he would do it, but he needed to know… "Don't abandon me…again."

"No," said the Doctor at once. "I'll stay…as long as I can. I won't abandon you, Jack."

Jack forced his hand to close. The first time in centuries, he thought, that the Doctor wasn't trying to leave him behind, and it was because he was coughing up blood. He panted a few times, blood now oozing over his tongue.

"Doctor," he said, "I,"

The Doctor stayed.

But Jack was gone.


End file.
